Eastern European pay-TV revenues still climbing

Despite the subscriber count increasing by less than one million, Eastern European pay TV revenues will increase by 9.9 per cent between 2015 and 2021 to $5.97 billion, according to the sixth edition of the Digital TV Eastern Europe Forecasts report. However, Digital TV Research estimates that pay-TV revenues rose by 27 per cent between 2010 and 2015, indicating that much of the fast growth is over.

There will be only 16,000 pay TV subscriber additions between 2016 and 2021 for the 22 countries covered in the report, taking the total to 80.05 million. However as analogu cable subs fall, the number of digital pay-TV subscribers will increase from 25.84 million (20.7 per cent of TV households) in 2010 to 54.63 million (42.8 per cent) in 2015 and onto 75.73 million (58.9 per cent) by 2021.

Accordingly, nearly all of the revenue growth will come from analogue cable TV subs converting to more expensive digital platforms. Digital pay-TV revenues will increase by $3 billion between 2010 and 2020 to $5.77 billion. They will increase by 32 per cent (or by $1.4 billion) between 2015 and 2021.

Pay-TV will be taken by 62.3 per cent of the region’s TV homes in 2021, up from 48.0 per cent at end-2010, but only up from 62.0 per cent at end-2015. This converts to 20 million more pay-TV subscribers between 2010 and 2021, but fewer than a million between 2015 and 2021.